Garrison Keillor is not a philosophical genius

Garrison Keillor is some guy who’s mildly famous for an NPR radio show that I think I might have heard half an episode of when I was eight. From what little of it I recall, it was approximately the most Midwestern thing in the world: half of the jokes sounded like Mr. Rogers calmly explaining, to a live audience of kindergarteners, Jonathan Edwards’ theology as developed in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and the other half had something to do with polka.

Needless to say, Garrison Keillor does not like Donald Trump. The reason, presumably, is that Garrison Keillor—who, incidentally, I never would have pictured as looking like a mad scientist’s first attempt at merging Boris Johnson into Tricky Dick, but here we are—is from the Midwest, and Donald Trump is from Manhattan. These two cultures are as different as the Finns, who I’m reliably informed speak an average of three words, all of which are “perkele”, in their lives, and the culture of the fellow who came up to me while I was buying a donut one morning last week and excitedly explained for half an hour that I ought to grow dreadlocks.

After spending two whole paragraphs casting stones about Donald Trump’s hair from his glass house somewhere on the shore of one of those lakes, Boris Nixon—sorry, Garrison Keillor—cuts straight to the heart of his criticism of the East Coast—sorry, Republican—nominee: he had, apparently, the wrong response to the small incident in Orlando where some loser from Cousinfuckistan pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and went Adam Lanza Jihad on a gay club.

After the worst mass shooting in American history on Sunday, 50 persons dead in Orlando, the bodies still being carted from the building, the faces of horror-stricken cops and EMTs on TV, the gentleman issued a statement on Twitter thanking his followers for their congratulations, that the tragedy showed that he had been “right” in calling for America to get “tough.” …

His response to the Orlando tragedy is one more clue that this election is different from any other. If Mitt Romney or John McCain had been elected president, you might be disappointed but you wouldn’t fear for the fate of the Republic. This time, the Republican Party is nominating a man who resides in the dark depths. He is a thug and he doesn’t bother to hide it.

Maybe this obsession with appearance is attractive to whatever audience out there it is that’s kept a show about polka on NPR for thirty years, but I, born and raised where maintaining a good appearance begins and ends with trying not to sweat one’s clothes into a dripping formless heap immediately upon stepping outside into the malarial atmosphere of a land that God never intended for man to inhabit, can’t see the point. If we must have politicians, isn’t it better to have politicians who can solve problems (on the rare occasion that the problems are real and can be solved) than politicians who can act all sad about them for the cameras before going off and doing nothing? The president is the Big Celebrity of the West, the one person in the world who can get more airtime than Kim Kardashian; but the president is also the man responsible for appointing people to the parts of government that appoint people who actually do things, and therefore the man responsible (albeit at a distance) for determining whether it’s legal to, for example, have borders—and this seems more important (not that I or any of you have any way to possibly influence the outcome of any election ever) than the former role, especially since the government could just crown Kim Kardashian Queen of America, and then, so as not to violate the human rights of the American people, hand out free cyanide pills to anyone who would want one in such a scenario, i.e. 99% of the population.

But—he also says that Trump is unduly obsessed with appearance.

We had a dozen or so ducktails in my high school class and they were all about looks.

What gives? Is Donald Trump, a “ducktail” according to world-renowned hairstylist Brick Jixon—sorry, Garrison Keillor—all about looks, or is he not about looks enough?

One can only conclude that people who became mildly famous for running radio shows about polka are not guaranteed to be philosophical geniuses.

6 responses to “Garrison Keillor is not a philosophical genius”

That can’t possibly be a human being, you must have found him in the Palau new guinea jungle, captured by the nice natives there and taught by them to speak.

Lol Plymouth brethren to Lutheran to Epsicopalian.

As if people haven’t already been declaring the bushes and McCain and Romney to all be literally Hitler and fearing for the fate of the republic.

One thing that will be good if Trump gets elected, Instead of every One blaming Texas for the Yankee literally Hitler Bushes, “WOW I CAN’T BELIEVE NEW YORK HAS SUCH AN ATMOSPHERE OF BUBBLING RIGHT-WING HATE TO PRODUCE SUCH A SHITLORD FOR PRESIDENT. UGH” etc.

I still struggle with middle-brow culture. High is openly insane, so easy to ignore, and low is so deliciously prole, it’s hard to be bothered, but the middle ought to be where interesting things happen. I always want for the well executed, but done to death art forms, but always get poorly executed pantomime of the high dreck. On the other hand, the absurdly rapid demise of the western middle class stings a bit less when the best they can puke up is game of thrones and Jessica Jones.

This is the problem with politically correct culture….it GROWS…insidiously…inside our own brains.

A huge % of the voters in this country, whose ancestors might have looked at the *statements* of politicians as (unreliable) *clues* to how the politicians might act, have now devolved to the point where they seem to honestly believe that *statements* are the only things that matter. Barack Obama said something that sounded sensitive about “people of color,” and Donald Trump said something that sounded *insensitive* to “people of color,” therefore Barack Obama was a great president and Donald Trump is unfit for the office. This is literally the discourse in most of the media AND in most private conversation. Who cares about debt, war, the economy, etc.? Apparently what we’re looking for in a President is politically correct tweets.

Garrison Keillor is a smart, accomplished man. But he has lost sight of what government is. We’ve forgotten that the federal government takes 25% of all dollars in the economy for itself and borrows another 10% of the economy on top of it, every year. For that kind of money, you’d think we’d wonder what the government is DOING more than what they are SAYING about random events. Garrison Keillor is a top 1%er, or at least top 5%er in terms of intelligence, accomplishment, etc. If he’s already lost the plot this thoroughly, the rest of the country is already gone. Irretrievably.

On the plus side, the voters have also lost the ability to articulate the benefits of democracy. So when we usher in a king, he will be unopposed as long as he praises homosexuals and people of color a few times before solidifying his power and finally saying whatever the hell he wants.